Bruce Parker - Wanka Spider
Artist: Bruce Parker
Title: Wanka Spider
Cat No: 2013
Size: 91 x 76 cm
Acrylic on Canvas
Stretched and ready to hang.
Story:
Since the mid 1970’s Pitjanjatjara Yankunytjatjara people have established decentralised communities close to available artesian water supplies, of which Indulkana, the home to Iwantja Arts, is one of them. Anangu people have special ties to totemic sites in the area and paint their connection to it. Artists use symbolism from their own individual Dreaming path, single and concentric circles, animal tracks and straight and curved lines. The dots in different colour blocks represent vegetation as it changes from place to place and season to season. Each painting represents not only the site, but the event that took place there in the Dreaming. Sites may be specific rocks, waterholes, special trees, mountains and many others. Not only geological features, but places where bush foods can be gathered. Wavy lines may depict travels of these ancestral beings. Contemporary art extends the boundaries of these traditions incorporating contemporary themes and bold colours.
Biography
“I saw white people at Ernabella when I was just little – they were missionaries and school teachers. Before that I was walking around with no clothes on, traditional way. When I was a boy I liked to be swimming at the creek between Ernabella and Fregon. My dad was working at Ernabella with the sheep – he was looking after them and shearing them. Sometimes we would run away and go hunting and riding on the donkeys and the camel, we got the donkeys as friends, mine was a special white one.”
